Tag Archives: Evelyn Waugh

Picasso was always, like a playwright, constantly “in dialogue” with his audience, ever needing the audience, sensing it and feeling it out like a lover pursuing the object of his affections. He was, in many ways, a metteur en scene, … Continue reading →

Its always fascinating how people can make surprising unexpected transformations in their lives that leave one reaching for a guide for the perplexed. A classic case was Malcolm Muggeridge the fiesty agnostic editor of Punch, the irreverent British magazine, who … Continue reading →

Phantom voices.Evelyn Waugh was a strange bird: the sort of upper class British snobbism that has been washed away; the reactionary conservative with an almost paranoid fear of the “other” with particular emphasis on Jews, who, based on his own … Continue reading →

by Art Chantry (art@artchantry.com) this is what a smart book looks like. new directions paperbacks were throughout the 1950’s, 60’s & 70’s the quintessential image of intelligence. all you had to do was walk around with one tucked under your … Continue reading →

“If a writer doesn’t generate hostility, he is dead. …Writers should provoke disagreement.” – V.S. Naipaul. Naipaul is something of a master craftsman in putting down rivals, the art of invidious comparison, and the guile of over-the-top self adulation. It … Continue reading →

It was unearthed in a burial chamber of a Minoan princess. It indicated that Crete, even in its “dark age” nourished a brilliant civilization…. “An unusual find was made however, close to the entrance to the side chamber, when the … Continue reading →

If you judged these things solely by press headlines, you would assume that the pope was about to face a lynch mob of jeering Protestants and vengeful atheists. Most Britons, we are told, are disgusted at the thought of spending … Continue reading →

MEPHIST. Now, Faustus, what wouldst thou have me do? FAUSTUS. I charge thee wait upon me whilst I live, To do whatever Faustus shall command, Be it to make the moon drop from her sphere, Or the ocean to overwhelm … Continue reading →